Muggle Studies
by flyin'rabbit
Summary: During and after his first Muggle Studies class, Charlie reaches the conclusion that there are way stranger species in the world than Muggles...


**A/N**: Just a story I wrote as a sort-of-sequel to another story of mine, _Sorting a Weasley_. You could read that too/first, if you'd want, but it's not necessary to understand this one, I think :)

**Disclaimer**: I don't own the world of Harry Potter...

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"Mind if I sit here?"

Charlie looked up, startled. He had been wondering how many other people would have actually chosen Muggle Studies in his year; as it turned out, he wasn't the only one. The girl who had asked the question looked vaguely familiar, but Charlie didn't know who she was. She certainly wasn't a Gryffindor.

"Sure, why not," he said, noticing that the girl seemed to become a little uneasy by his silence. He stared at her in shock as her hair colour suddenly changed from brown to purple as she sat down.

"So," the girl said, turning around in her seat to face him. Finding him sitting there with his mouth wide open, she sighed. "Did my hair change colour again? Sorry, that tends to happen sometimes. Normally I have no problem controlling it, but, you know, when I'm very happy and excited and – " She suddenly seemed to realise what she was saying, and she hastily added, "Never mind that." She scrunched up her face in concentration, and her hair was brown again.

"Wow," Charlie breathed. "How do you _do_ that?" He suddenly understood why he couldn't quite remember her; after all, if she could change her appearance at will, she probably looked completely different every single day!

"I'm a Metamorphmagus," the girl answered, smiling a little.

"Wow," Charlie said again. He had heard of Metamorphmagi, yet he had never met one. So they really existed.

"I'm Tonks, by the way," the girl told him, holding out a hand for him to shake.

"Charlie Weasley," he replied, shaking her hand.

"I know," the girl said, before firmly clapping her mouth shut. Her hair, Charlie noticed, turned bright red; she could almost be his sister. But of course, his sister was only four, so that would be rather odd.

"Yeah, well," he said, "my brother's a Prefect this year, and I guess that us Weasleys kind of stand out in a crowd – " He quickly shut up, though, as the Professor entered the room. As it turned out, about ten people has picked the class after all. No other Gryffindors, though.

After the Professor had given them a short introduction, he instructed them to read the first chapter in their book (it was about Muggles in general, Charlie knew; his father had made him read the book over the summer) and write a small essay about that, in pairs.

As Tonks read the chapter, Charlie merely skimmed through it again. At once, he realised something. "Oh!" he whisper-shouted. "I know! You were Sorted right before me, weren't you?"

Tonks looked up from her book, blushing slightly. "Yes, I was. I can't believe you remembered that."

Charlie shrugged. "Me neither. But I was quite nervous then, I thought you were sitting there for almost an hour…"

"No, that was you," she answered, grinning. Charlie rolled his eyes. As if it was his fault that that Hat wanted to chat with him first. And right when Charlie had started to enjoy that talk, it had decided to Sort him.

"Well, I can't really help it that the Sorting Hat was taking so long to put me somewhere," he whispered back. "Hey, you're a Hufflepuff, right? It even considered putting me there, too." He shook his head at the thought.

Tonks turned pink again. Charlie started wondering if she maybe had some kind of fever, but she seemed like the kind of girl who wouldn't appreciate him asking that, so he didn't. "It did? Huh, funny," Tonks finally said. "Why did it place you in Gryffindor, then?"

Charlie was a little taken aback by this. "Well, all the Weasleys have always been Gryffindors, that's why! Besides, the only reason it wanted to place me there, was that some student would have liked that. Dunno who that could be, though."

"Ah," Tonks just commented, in a slightly higher voice than before. "How – interesting." She coughed. "I have no idea, either." With that, she turned back to her book, but her hair, Charlie noticed, had turned yellow now. Not blond, bright yellow. Quite an odd sight.

Apart from discussing what to write in their essay and what not, they didn't really talk for the rest of the lesson. As they were assigned another essay as homework, Charlie decided to ask Tonks about that after class ended. At least, he planned on doing that, but she left very quickly. _Probably just hungry_, Charlie thought. Come to think of it, so was he.

After dinner, Charlie caught Tonks as she left the Great Hall. "Tonks! Hey, Tonks!" he shouted, attracting the attention of not only his classmate, but of half the school. Well, at least she had heard him as well.

She turned around and, seeing that it was Charlie, she blinked a couple of times. "Er – yes?" she asked, sounding a bit unsure of what to do.

"About that homework for Muggle Studies – want to work on that together some time?" he asked. Honestly, it would be much easier and much quicker if they did it together instead of alone, so it seemed like a very logical question to him. Judging from her reaction, she was thinking along the same lines. Although Charlie wasn't sure if he could really work on the essay with the exploded ear-drums he had obtained through her squealing. Girls were such strange creatures sometimes.

As they sat in the library that evening, Tonks seemed much happier already than she had been when she had left the classroom. In fact, she was bubbling with excitement, which was, to Charlie at least, a little scary as well.

"So, why did _you_ pick Muggle Studies?" she asked him, as he tried to read the first page of the book he had grabbed from a shelf earlier. He looked up to find her staring at him intently, both hands supporting her head as she grinned widely.

"Er – " Charlie was starting to feel a little uncomfortable now. "My dad – he likes Muggles a lot. Finds them very interesting. And I guess that they can be quite funny and fascinating at times. So, yeah… and Bill says that Divination is a bunch of rubbish, so I shouldn't choose that. My dad was pretty happy when I told him I'd picked this class. And you? Why are you taking it?"

It seemed to take Tonks a couple of seconds to realise that it was her turn to talk now, but when she removed her elbows from the table, she accidentally knocked her ink bottle on the floor, along with a couple of books. Turning bright red once more, she ducked under the table to pick it all up. The spells she tried to clean the books didn't work the way they should, so Charlie decided to step in. They weren't really allowed to use magic in the library, but it was for a good cause, right? After a few '_Scourgify_'s' and a '_Reparo_' for the broken ink bottle, he looked up to find Tonks staring at him in awe. He shifted in his seat, trying to look everywhere but in front of him.

"Yeah – er, right," Tonks finally said. Charlie noticed that her hair was red again. "Thanks for that. Uh - I thought it would be interesting as well. To see Muggles from a wizard's point of view, you know? My dad's Muggleborn so he saw the magical world from, well, a non-magical point and my mum's a Pureblood, so she saw the Muggle world from a completely biased point of view. And then there's me," she finished feebly. During her little speech, she had only been staring at one spot on the table. Now, however, she looked up again.

"So your mum's from one of those families who think that they're better than everybody else?" Charlie asked, a little confused.

Tonks flinched slightly, but recovered quickly. "Yeah, she is. But, as you can guess, her parents – well, her entire family – weren't so happy when she married my dad. I never met any one of my mum's relatives, actually," she added in an afterthought.

Charlie smiled at her, slowly turning back to his book. They worked on their essays in silence, but every time Charlie looked up from his parchment to look something up in the book, he noticed Tonks staring at him. And even when he didn't look up, he could feel her eyes on him. It made him highly uncomfortable, but he didn't really dare to say anything about it. So, when he had finished his essay, Tonks was only halfway done.

Not knowing if it would be rude to leave now, Charlie shifted a little in his chair. As if reading his thoughts, Tonks told him, "You can go, if you want. I need to finish this, but, you know, I'll be fine."

Charlie smiled at her one last time. "Alright, then I'll be off. I'll see you around, Tonks." With that, he walked out, but then he heard footsteps behind him.

"Wait, Charlie!" As she came running after him, Tonks tripped, it seemed, over her own feet. After helping her up, Charlie shot her a curious look. She had turned red again and there had to be something she wanted to say. "I really like you," she blurted out suddenly, before covering her mouth with her hands again, looking mortified.

Charlie blinked. He had no idea what to say to this, mainly because he had no idea what on earth she meant. "Er – yeah, I think you're very nice as well," he therefore replied, smiling at her. She smiled back, albeit weakly, before shuffling back into the library, leaving Charlie alone to wonder if he'd done something wrong. _Never mind Muggles_, he thought as he walked towards the Gryffindor common room,_ or Metamorphmagi. If there's one odd and incomprehensible species in the world, it has to be girls_.

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**A/N**: So, liked it? Hated it? Let me know what you think, please review!


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